


Waiting For That Feeling To Come

by thesaddestboner



Category: Baseball RPF
Genre: Abandoned Work - Unfinished and Discontinued, Angst, Gen, M/M, Not!Fic, Past Character Death, Pre-Slash, St. Louis Cardinals
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-02-25
Updated: 2013-02-25
Packaged: 2017-12-03 14:28:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,219
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/699247
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thesaddestboner/pseuds/thesaddestboner
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>Everything started and ended with Mulder in Oakland.  Now he’s going to a new situation, different people, a new rotation.</i>
</p>
            </blockquote>





	Waiting For That Feeling To Come

**Author's Note:**

> This was originally supposed to be for the [](http://sslyricwheel.livejournal.com/profile)[**sslyricwheel**](http://sslyricwheel.livejournal.com/) **\- Secrets and Lies** challenge a few years ago, but I never finished it. I decided to finally try and finish it after Matty retired and... failed again. This bears no relation to [Under the Influence](http://archiveofourown.org/works/408885).
> 
> Yes, both guys' first and last names begin with the same letter, and sound similar. It's a bitch.
> 
> I might give it another go and finish this at some point, but I highly doubt it.
> 
> Title from "Tender," by Blur.
> 
> You can find me on [twitter](http://twitter.com/thesaddestboner) and [tumblr](http://saddestboner.tumblr.com).

Mulder trots in from the field, bits of grass clinging to the side of his neck, his face flushed, skin damp. He tosses his glove into his locker, leans his forehead against the cool, smooth eggshell white stucco wall, bangs his head once, twice to knock the swarm of pain buzzing in his temples out of his brain.

A hand closes on his shoulder, squeezing, and Mulder spins around, his heart clenched up in his throat. Morris. “Are you okay?”

“I’m fine,” Mulder says, scoring a hand through his sweat-heavy hair, pushing it away from his forehead, face still tight and warm from the oppressive Florida heat. It’s damp and heavy, not anything like the dry, crackling oven of Arizona.

He’d never asked for a trade, had never wanted to come to St. Louis in the first place. Hadn’t thought a trade was even _possible_ after Billy dealt Redman and Hudson that winter. There was a comfort zone in Oakland that was ripped out from under him.

Everything started and ended with Mulder in Oakland. Now he’s going to a new situation, different people, a new rotation.

In St. Louis they have Jason Marquis fresh off a career season and a comeback story for the ages in Chris Carpenter. They have Matt Morris coming off shoulder surgery and a subpar season, primed for great things (again). Mulder is just one more name. He isn’t the biggest story in St. Louis, not by a long shot.

Morris nods, hiking up one dark eyebrow inquisitively. “You sure? You don’t look too hot.”

“I’m fine,” Mulder says. He turns back to his locker, begins unbuttoning his jersey, flicking open the small pearlescent buttons. “Thank you for your concern, though. I appreciate it.”

Morris shrugs and nods, and moves to a locker that is not his own. Mulder follows his gaze to the plaque hanging over the empty stall, watches Morris lean his forehead against it.

Shuffling in socked feet over to Morris’ side, Mulder says, “What are you doing?”

“I’m asking DK for a good season.” Morris touches the plaque with the flat of his palm, rubs it until it shimmers and Mulder can see their distorted reflections looking back at them. “I always ask him for a good season.”

Mulder looks at the dusty white-and-red jersey hanging from a hook, locker still waiting for its owner to return from wherever he’d gone. Little bottles of cologne and aftershave and shampoo, a small bar of soap resting on the shelf next to a faded, sweat-stained baseball cap which is resting next to a framed picture of a beautiful blonde woman and three small, gleaming blonde children, a stack of unopened mail. A shrine.

“You believe in ghosts and stuff?” Mulder asks, incredulous.

Morris fiddles with one of the bottles of shampoo, twisting and untwisting the cap. “Not really . . . But I believe in divine things.”

Mulder nods. He was not a part of this particular fraternity. He did not know Darryl Kile, so he can only nod. “Oh. So do I,” Mulder says. “I believe in baseball.”

-

Mulder rooms with another pitcher, Rick Ankiel, while Morris gets a hotel suite all to himself. He figures it’s some sort of seniority thing, but even Pujols and Rolen and Edmonds (the Three-Headed MVP Monster, LaRussa likes to say) have roommates, so Mulder—Mulder just doesn’t know.

There is a lot about this team that Mulder doesn’t know.

He misses Arizona, misses the sky that’s blue enough to break your heart. Mulder won’t let himself miss Oakland, however.

Ankiel is in bed, flipping through channels, a laminated room service menu spread open on his lap. “Porn. Porn. Golf. Porn. Porn. Basketball. _Golden Girls_. Porn.”

Mulder bends over a chest of drawers, roll of masking tape in hand, and splits the drawers down the middle. “I don’t care. If there’s nothing on that you want to watch, you can just turn it off.”

Ankiel complies, shutting off the TV and leafing through the room service menu, picking up the receiver and holding it to his ear. “Want something to eat?”

“I’m fine. No thank you.” Mulder shuts the drawers and climbs into bed, pulling the Gideon’s Bible out of the nightstand, opening it to a random passage, then looking down to see the verse he’s fallen on.

“You read the Bible?” Ankiel sets the telephone receiver back into its cradle and puts the laminated menu on the nightstand. Ankiel grabs his pillow and punches it up like a sack of flour before laying down his head.

Mulder shrugs. “Sometimes.” He reads out loud the verse he’s picked or, more accurately, the verse that’s picked him. “ ‘Faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.’ ”

Ankiel nods, eyes squinched shut, not really paying attention. “This heat is killing me.”

Mulder closes the Bible and then thumbs to another random page. “ ‘Unstable as water, thou shalt not excel.’ ”

“A couple guys’d qualify on this team,” Ankiel jokes, slinging his bare forearm over his eyes, a scant smile curling up the corner of his lips.

Again. “ ‘If I ascend up into heaven, Thou art there; if I make my bed in hell, behold, Thou art there.’ ”

Ankiel lowers his arm and glances over. “Okay, enough with the Bible, dude. Trying to get to sleep here,” he says, laughing.

Mulder closes the Bible and set it back in the nightstand. “Okay, Rick. Goodnight.” He turns out the light next to his bed and closed his eyes.

Ankiel mumbles some indiscernible thing under his breath.

“Hm?” Mulder says.

“Nothing,” Ankiel says, sounding distant, hazy with sleep already. “Sweet dreams.”

-

The next morning, Mulder is first to the clubhouse, an hour ahead of everyone else. He’s nothing if not punctual; it can’t hurt to set a good example for your new team. He likes being the first one in, anyway. He feels like he’s done something right. Mulder puts his things in his locker and goes to take a shower.

When he comes back a few minutes later, the only other locker open is Morris’. He is leaning forward against his stall, his pale pink dress shirt off and hanging from one elbow, his face pressed into the soft flesh of his bare arm.

A long, thin silvery scar snakes its way down Morris’ shoulder, and his face is corkscrewed into an expression of some unfathomable pain.

“Is your shoulder all right?” Mulder says, making his presence known, and he can almost feel the heavy air around them crystallizing, shattering.

Morris spins around, wiping his fingertips at the corners of his eyes. “What? Oh, um. Yeah. My shoulder is fine,” he stammers, erratic breathing and blinking eyes, stammering so hard now that he could have just stepped out of a badly dubbed kung-fu movie.

“Are you sure you’re okay?” Mulder moves closer, bending over to pick up the other end of Morris’ shirt, injured hip screaming in pain, stabbing into his brain like millions of tiny needles. When he straightens himself out, tucks the sleeve into Morris’ hand, a rivulet of sweat trickles down the small of his back, into the damp towel knotted loosely around his waist. Breath ragged and torn around the edges, Mulder’s chest thrums with the slow burn of exertion even though he hasn’t even done anything, and this time it’s Morris’ turn to look concerned.

“Are _you_ okay?” Morris asks, moving close enough to Mulder to touch him, but he doesn’t touch him, he keeps his hands at his sides and Mulder lets out a breath he doesn’t even realize he’s been holding in.

Mulder nods, “I’m fine, Matt,” and presses the heel of his hand to his injured hip, squeezing down hard, hard enough to take his breath away. Mulder smiles at Morris, an easy, effortless flick of the lips, _See? I’m fine_ written in the thin spidery lines around his eyes.

Morris nods, once, and Mulder hopes he had sold it well enough that Morris will not ask anymore questions. “Oh. Well, if anything’s bothering you.” Morris shrugs, a brief flicker of pain ghosting across his features. “You’ll let me know, right?”

“Of course,” Mulder says, but he knows that he won’t.

-

Mulder drags his luggage down the hallway, searching for his hotel room, Morris is sitting cross-legged in front of his door, a piece of red string tied around his wrist, his hat off and his hair and eyes wild.

Morris sticks his foot in Mulder’s way, sending him sprawling to the carpeted hallway. His tone is cheery and his dark eyes are bright like gems. “Hey, roomie. Sorry about that.”

Mulder, doing his best to ignore the stabs of pain radiating from his hip, rolls onto his back and stares at the light fixture, vision swallowed up by white, grappling blindly for his bag. “Thanks a _lot_ , Morris,” and then, full-on sarcasm mode. “I know you probably miss Haren a lot, but is this any way to treat the new guy?”

Morris toes the black nylon bag back into Mulder’s hands, the corner of his mouth ticking up in an almost-smile. “Said I was sorry, Mulder. Anyway, you’re my new roomie.” He cocks his head to one side like a dog, his hair flopping into his face, and Mulder’s fingers itch to push it off his forehead. But he doesn’t, he keeps his hands to himself.

Mulder pulls himself into a sitting position, pressing his fingers against his injured hip, short of breath, panting like he’s just run the Boston Marathon. “Roomie? I’m your roomie?”

Morris nods, resting his wrist on his knee. “Yes. You. Are. My. New. Roomie,” and he’s unable to hide a sly little smirk.

“I’m not fucking retarded, Morris. I heard you fine the first time,” Mulder says, his breaths still short and painful. “Just _why_ did you give up your fancy suite, huh? Wanted to reconnect with the common folk?”

“Ankiel retired,” Morris says, fiddling with the string tied around his wrist.

“He _what_ ,” Mulder asks closing his eyes, pressing his fingertips to his sinuses.

“He retired from pitching to turn his focus on becoming an outfielder,” Morris says. “He got reassigned to minor league camp and they sent me here to bail you out.”

“Ferris Bueller, you’re my _hero_.” Mulder presses his fingertips against his hip, seeing red, and then white, and even a flash of green and gold behind his eyelids.

Morris reaches up and closes his hand around the doorknob, pulling himself to his feet, wincing and hissing in barely masked pain. “Something wrong with your hip?”

Mulder gets to his feet with a hitched groan, his voice snagging in his throat, avoiding the odd look in Morris’ dark, unsettling eyes. “Something wrong with your shoulder?” and it’s Mulder’s turn to smirk now.

A grin spreads across Morris’ face slow and easy. Mulder blinks, confused. Morris’ grin continues to widen, something haunting, haunted flickering in the backs of his eyes. Mulder, for a split second, thinks he even sees tears. “Everything’s okay,” Morris says, opening the door.

Morris dragging his luggage behind him, claims the first bed next to the wall, leaving Mulder to take the one next to the radiator. Mulder opens up the pocket on the front of his nylon bag and pulls out his roll of masking tape, slipping it on his wrist like a bracelet.

“What are you going to do with that,” asks Morris, lying out on his bed, with a soft, laboring sigh.

Mulder flicks his eyes over Morris, and then back to his nylon bag, and then the roll of tape circling his wrist. “It never hurts to be neat and orderly,” he points out, shaking the roll of tape at Morris.

Morris shrugs, wincing openly now. “Oh. Knock yourself out.” He reaches up and touches his shoulder, pressing against the scar, playing Chicken with himself and his aching shoulder. His brown hair flops into his eyes and he blows at it, and suddenly, Mulder has an inexplicable flashback of Zito, whom he hadn’t thought about since January, left behind in Oakland.

Morris has the same puka shell necklace, but he’s a right hander, so maybe they’re not as much alike as Mulder’s mind seems to want them to be. He looks away from Morris’ mouth, which is too soft, and too pink.

He peels off a strip of tape and bisects a set of drawers instead. “Left is mine because I’m a lefty. You get right because, obviously, you’re a righty.”

“Smart thinking.” Morris isn’t even looking at him anymore; he’s rolled onto his stomach and his arms are crossed under his chin. His shirt is already off and on the floor, and Mulder sighs.

“Don’t throw your dirty clothes on the floor. Give them to me and I can take them with my laundry tomorrow,” he says, bending over to pick up Morris’ carelessly discarded shirt. A spike of pain shafts down from his hip into his thigh and he has to put out a hand just to keep from falling down.

Morris is looking up at him now, his sharp, dark eyes softened with concern. “You sure your hip isn’t bothering you?”

“I told you it was fine,” Mulder says, limping over to his nylon bag, pulling out a large plastic Ziploc labeled ‘dirty laundry’ and placing the shirt inside.

“Okay . . .” but Morris doesn’t sound like he believes Mulder just then.

“Don’t look at me like that.” Mulder hobbles back to his bed and lies down, making sure to lie on his good hip and not the sore one. Morris notices anyhow.

“Look at you like what?” he asks, voice low, even though they’re the only ones in the room. Mulder quickly reminds himself that that isn’t quite true; Morris’ ghosts are always present and accounted for.

“Like—like you think I’m going to fall apart.” Mulder presses his fingertips to his eyelids.

Morris is quick to point out, “I don’t think that,” waving a hand through the air vaguely, a grand sweeping gesture, as if he’s trying to show off to Mulder that his shoulder _is_ indeed healthy.

Mulder isn’t quite so convinced, studying the lines around Morris’ eyes, the beads of sweat that break out over his brow. “I’m not some fucking junker, I’m not gonna fall apart, so you can keep your fake concern to yourself, and shove—”

Morris looks at him, raising his eyebrows. “I don’t think that, Mark.”

Mulder tightens his mouth and swallows back the rest of his bitter soliloquy, crossing his arms over his chest. “Right, sure you don’t.”

Morris sits up, leaning back on his elbows, giving Mulder a _look_. His eyes are impossibly black and his smile is pointed at the corners. “Nobody believes that, Mark,” Morris says, and Mulder wishes he’d just stop saying his name, because it sounds funny coming out of Morris’ mouth.

Mulder rolls onto his stomach with a weary sigh and curls his arms around his pillow. “Not gonna fall apart.” Mulder can hear the shifting of bedsprings and fabric, and raises his chin up off his pillow to see Morris standing over him, hands on his hips. He shrugs up at him.

Morris motions for Mulder to make some room for him, and puts a hand on the wing of Mulder’s shoulder blade when he doesn’t move, just gives Morris a confused, slightly annoyed roll of the eyes. Morris presses down a little on Mulder’s shoulder blade. “Shove over.”

“What are you gonna do, test out my bum hip?” Mulder asks, shifting to give Morris some room to join him on the bed.

“Something like that.” Morris slides his hand from Mulder’s shoulder blade to palm lightly at his hip, studying Mulder’s reaction.

Mulder bites down hard on the inside of his cheek, swallowing at a sharp noise building in the back of his throat. “See? Fine,” he whispers, using all his strength to keep from crying out.

Morris leans forward, hair itching across Mulder’s shoulder blade, giving his bad hip a light squeeze. “Yeah, you’re just fine.”

Mulder squirms, reaching back to push his hand away. “Dude—what’re you doing?” Mulder twists under Morris’ hand and tries to roll away, struggling against a sharp lance of pain in his hip. This time it’s worse, he can’t shift away.

“Testing you out.” Morris smirks at him.

“Told you. I’m fine.” The pain has finally faded, but Mulder doesn’t move to push Morris away. Morris traces his fingertips lightly over the paper-thin skin at the place where Mulder’s aching hip meets his thigh.

The bedsprings creak as Morris climbs in next to Mulder uninvited, and then he’s climbing over him, Mulder catching an accidental elbow to the small of his back. “You’re sweating,” Morris points out.

“Yeah, and? What’s your point?” Mulder pushes himself up with a small, compressed noise, and stabs Morris with a glare.

“My point is that you’ve been lying,” Morris says, pulling his legs underneath him, fiddling with that frayed red string bracelet. “Lying to the team.”

“Oh? So what? You gonna tell Tony and Jim that Beane sold ‘em a bill of goods?” Mulder snaps, cut glass eyes sparking dangerously.

Morris quirks a brief smile. “We’ve all got secrets we gotta carry.”

“Oh, and what’s yours?” Mulder sneers, scrubbing the palm of his hand across his forehead.

Morris stops playing with the piece of red string tied around his wrist and raises a hand to push his hair out of his face. “My secret is that I don’t tell my secrets to just anybody,” Morris says, eyes darkening, weird Mona Lisa half-smile playing on his lips. “At least not on the first date.”

“God,” Mulder says, happily distracted from the touching and _especially_ the throbbing ache in his hip, drawing his hands into his lap, “you’re fucking _weird_.”

“I’ve been called worse.” Morris stretches out and brushes his hip against Mulder’s, tucking his arms over his chest, fitting his hands into the crooks of his elbows.

Mulder sucks in a breath and closes his eyes when their hips bump, clamping his teeth into his bottom lip. Mulder lets out his breath in a high-pitched whistle that probably only dogs could hear.

“You okay?” and Mulder shivers as Morris’ breath skims the back of his neck, makes the tiny hairs stand up. He’s closer than Mulder expected him to be.

“Fine,” Mulder murmurs, shifting his hips away from Morris’. Mulder wonders if Morris is doing this on purpose, just to fuck with him for lying about the injury. He opens his eyes and looks over at him.

“What?”

Mulder gives Morris’ surgically repaired shoulder a light squeeze. “This hurt?”

Morris barely hides a flinch. “No.”

“Who’s the liar now, Matty Mo?” Mulder sneers, releasing Morris’ shoulder.

Morris smiles through the pain, pleased, and Mulder blinks in confusion. “I knew there was something I liked about you,” Morris says.

Mulder yanks his hand away quickly, as if he’s been burned, and rolls onto his back, tucking his arms securely across his chest. Mulder turns his eyes to the ceiling. “Whatever. The hip is fine.”

“And so’s my shoulder.” Morris pushes himself up on his elbows and gives Mulder a look. “End of story?”

Mulder looks over at him, nods once, stiffly. “End of story.”

**Author's Note:**

> The author of this piece intends no insult, slander, or copyright infringement, and is not profiting from this work. This story is a complete work of fiction and does not necessarily reflect on the nature of the individuals featured. This is for entertainment purposes only. If you found this story while Googling your name or the names of your friends, hit the back button now.


End file.
